Sage Virtual Machine, download size 407 MB

[Emil Widmann]

Using my stripped binaries
http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/browse_thread/thread/7d911e59a649eaf6
and the base distribution of the Live CD, I have managed to build a
virtual machine from sage (version 4.6, size zipped 407 MB, size
unzipped 468 MB). This is a reduction of roughly 60% compared to the
full vm image.

I uploaded the file vm-sage-lithe-a1.zip to:
http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/emil/sagelithe/vm-sage-lithe-a1.zip

A screenshot: http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/emil/doc/html/en/pictures/virtual_machineBIG.jpg

-----
Technical Data (small vm image / current sage vm image):
Virtual RAM: 512 MB / 512 MB
Virtual Disk size: 4GB / 8 GB
Virtual Swapspace: 512 MB (swapfile) / 1 GB (partition)
VMTools installed: no / yes
Jave RE: yes / yes
R - plotting: yes / no
Matplotlib-gui: yes-TclTk / no

hostname: vm-sagelithe
user: root
passwd: woofwoof (it's Puppy Linux)
admin password for sage notebook: sage

As reported I have4 failing doctests on my stripped binaries, but I
accept this as a "user only" version, no development intended in the
VM. Also creating cython code is not possible.

It was hardest for me to get the network interface working between the
virtual machine and the host system. I use the following startup
script which uses a nonsecure http. Please comment if this is possible
in local network.

--
#!/bin/sh
export SAGE_BROWSER=seamonkey
IP=$(ifconfig eth0| grep 'inet addr:' | cut -d: -f2 | awk '{ print
$1 }')
IPINFO=$(printf "Use http://%s to connect to the Sage Notebook
Server!" "$IP")
xterm -geometry 120x9 -e sage -notebook port=80 address=$IP
require_login=False open_viewer=True &
gtkdialog-splash -text "$IPINFO" -bg lightblue -fontsize large -close
never -placement bottom &
----

There is still room for size reduction, because the base distro is
same as live CD, I just titied up the desktop a bit (less icons). So
there are still lots of applications included which are not really
necessary in the vm-image (media players, flash installed, gnumerics).
Some of the applications may be usefull, because there are plenty of
network tools (incl. samba client / server, ftp client/server).

Also the minimum possible virtual RAM is probably lower, around 375
MB, this could be important if the vm is to run on older, "Ram
challenged" hardware.

Feedback and even *testing* appreciated!
kind regards
emil

[Emil Widmann]

A User on the sagelive Forum reports successfull run of the VM - image
with qemu-kvm
using arcane commandline ability:

qemu-kvm -enable-kvm -drive file=vmsla1-0.vmdk,if=ide -m 1024 -vga
vmware -net nic,model=i82551 -net user,hostfwd=tcp::8080-:80

just for the records,
emil